I don't want to give into the tech overlords just yet; give me a real person anytime

I recently went into a fast food restaurant [cough, cough, Taco Bell on Harrodsburg Road here in Lexington], waited patiently, was finally told someone would be with me after 5 minutes, then was told by the cashier to use the kiosk. When I said no, I wanted to order in person, she gestured there and made it clear that's where she wanted me to order. I said no, she shrugged and gestured again. I left. As I got into my car, she went out for her smoke break, the apparent reason she didn't want to serve me. I complained through the rewards app with details, but never heard from corporate. I will not step foot in that store. I haven't given up on the company, but I am still not happy with the outcome. And I will not use a kiosk. For one, I don't want to deal with what sort of germs before I eat it. I usually go through the drive-through, so I hadn't encountered this before.

Not only did I

get it all out to the Dumpster and Rosie recycling containers, I hit my daily activity level goal, for the fourth day this week (Sunday was the game, Monday was spent away from work and the trip from the parking lot to the medical centre) according to my phone. I went to plug it in for the night, and realised that the step count was 4,995. I was five steps short of my 5,000 step goal. So I unplugged it and walked down the hall with it a couple of times. Now it says 5,024. I can tick it off my Habitica dailies list. Is it scary that I do what my phone suggests? Or that I sign into my laptop with my face? I'm not sure the marriage of human and technology is always for the best. I'm not a Luddite--I'm actually an avid adopter of technology, but I use it knowing I have no privacy, and I'm not entirely sure I'd set up a Smart Home, if I had a house, because frankly, having my very home hacked scares me a bit. I don't think I'm paranoid to think of that scenario at all, you know.

I applied

for the first of four jobs that are open right now in the area that are library-related. It is a full-time children's library at the Lexington Public Library, Central Library. Wish me luck. I have taken classes in children's literature and children's programming in libraries, initiated a local site for the Reach Out and Read early literacy program. I've done some children's programming, and I started a family resource center focused on parenting and health topics using grant monies. So, while I've been a hospital librarian for all these years, I've done this, too, and I made sure I put them in the application. Also, I've supervised high school volunteers who were from a special education program. I've been a solo librarian all this time, but I did do that, including having a young lady who was interested in computers help me with the cataloguing. It was a great experience.

Wish me luck!

The other three are all academic positions: a library manager position, a faculty digital humanities librarian (both at Young Library), and a health sciences librarian in instructional design/nursing liaison, also a faculty position, and that one's at the Chandler Medical Library, where I know several staff (and one of my references is there, and three of my references are nurses). I hope one of these four pans out. :)

I dropped off the family resource books from the hospital as a donation to the Lexington Public Library today. There were three big boxes (I didn't pack them, so they were kind of heavy; I think my hand truck, which is rated at 300 lbs, might have been tested). I'd say there were about 200 books. I think they'd be excellent for their collection, or there is a Friends of the Library sale in April.

That leaves about a third of the library books (most went to the new facility in various offices) to box up and give to charity. There are some things upstairs, as well. I have to make a guide to using the UK Med library (there is no affiliation agreement on library services, but any resident of the Commonwealth of Kentucky can use the library and get a library card, and they are across the street on the other side of the hospital from the new facility). I need to finish changing our DOCLINE holdings to the electronic journals they will still have. All my stuff is basically home already--the plants, the various stuff from the desk, a few professional books, etc. I still need to bring the MLA News and the Journal of the Medical Library Association issues in, as well as a vase, and a I found that needs to go to the new head of the membership committee of the Hospital Libraries Section of the Medical Library Association (they're buttons with the logo, which I had when I was chair), but everything else is in the house. Now I just have to figure where to put things. :) The plants, at least, are in the window. I was afraid they weren't getting much light, but I was home during the afternoon sunlight, and I think they'll be okay. But it's afternoon sun, not the overhead and north-eastern exposure they're used to. So we'll see.

YKWIA wanted to be alone with his thoughts today, and I guess I wouldn't be great company, either, since I'm a little sad about the whole library closing thing and afraid about being unemployed, so I need to work on the game notes and work on the apartment some.

I did speak to the librarian at St. Joseph Hospital here in Lexington. She's hosting a Kentucky Medical Library Association meeting April 4th, and I don't have anything else planned, so I can go. She wanted to make sure I knew, especially as I'm still an individual member of the association. I had sent out a goodbye message to the electronic list the other day. She and another librarian were interested in the group that took our journals, so I gave her some contact information and will get back with the other librarian this week.

I'm kind of mellow, as I've been listening to Pandora, the Ed Sheeran station, although Coldplay's 'Yellow' is playing right now. I think I'm going to go listen to an audiobook (The Arm and the Stone, by Victoria Strauss, and scrounge up dinner, and then really work on the house. Among other things, the fish are getting low on their water in the tank. I am a bad fish mom. I've had several for years, feeder goldfish that are fairly pretty, and there are two left, in a 29-gallon tank. I'm thinking of cleaning everything out and starting over, with the fish in a small tank till the big one gets well-established. It's always had trouble with nitrates (which aren't as dangerous as other things, but most fish don't do well, and there are algae blooms), from the get go, the first time I ever had trouble with them. It doesn't matter how much I clean it, the nitrates stay up, even with an established aquarium. So we'll see. I'm not sure I can get away with a three-gallon tank temporarily housing two fish, as goldfish actually need some space, but I'll try to do something. But right now I have to do something, as they're not happy.

Okay, I'm going to sign off for now. At least I got that application in (Monday at 9 am is the deadline). My computer was giving me fits and I had to restart it. Hopefully it'll keep going--I certainly can't pay for a new one right now, and unlike a desktop, I can't really fix laptops. I guess the principles are the same, but everything's so smaller, and there's a battery. I'd rather replace something in a desktop (I can do modems, drives, memory cards, etc., and I think I could do a power supply but haven't). But laptops are a different story. But I think mine has to do with the fact that it's a Windows 8 machine running Windows 10 and it's four years old, which is kind of old for a computer. My desktop (which YKWIA has borrowed) was originally a Windows 7 machine, and it sometimes has issues, and seems to not like him in general, though it works for me (I used to have the same trouble with his Windows 7 machine). I know machines do not 'like' certain operators over others, but it seems electronics can be temperamental. I know I've had people who used our copier who jammed it every time, to the point where I would meet them at the door and ask to make the copies myself. I've come over to the copier and just touched it, and it's been fine. Just saying. Anyway, I may write later. I'm hungry (I had cheese and bread for breakfast, along with lima beans, and I had a can of peas for lunch, so I haven't had much today). Next week is right before payday AND the dietary department will no longer be serving hot food (they aren't going to the new facility, either). So I'll have to figure out what I can take. I've got a couple of cans of vegetarian chili and some vegetarian burgers. That may be what I eat. In case I don't get back here to write tonight, good night.

Yes, we need the liberal arts, too!

Why America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

Creativity, writing skills, and the ability to think are truly important to our future. Technical skills are important, but they blossom when coupled with the benefits of a liberal arts education as well. For example, I give you:

That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket

I love this

The first computer I used in school was a TRS-80, manufactured by the folks at Radio Shack. The first one I owned was an Atari 800 XL, which I got my senior year in high school and used through part of grad school. The word processor was a ROM pack. One day there was a fire at a warehouse near the university. A power surge caused all the control characters (the formatting codes) to spin wildly on the screen and I couldn't save or print the document. This, of course, happened right before it was due. I wound up threatening my roommate with harm if she turned off the computer or even the television (that was our monitor in those days), and had to go bed my teacher to let me turn in a handwritten version I'd copied off the screen. Really.

When I went off to college, we thought it was on the fritz and my mom bought another one, and it turned out the dial on the TV used for tuning had gotten turned in the move, so she kept the other and became a video game fiend, especially at Dig Dug, which I finally got back from her. I still have the games, though the computer died awhile back. Every now and then I look at the systems as they come up on eBay. Kids today just don't get a little pixelated man digging under monsters or jumping over alligators like in Pitfall as what we considered fun times.

There is a library-related section, too, in the video, going something like this:

'When this computer was used, there was no internet.'
'Then how did you look up homework?
'You would go to the library.'
'Who would want to do that????'

'That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.'

I feel like the lady in the Beatrice esurance commercial who is incredulous at the non-techie Beatrice sharing things to her wall. YKWIA showed me the commercial, instantly recognising similarities between the two of us. And yes, he would be Beatrice. If he every shared info, even 'offline'. :) That said, he's become quite adept at finding things online and doing various things like watching videos, etc., all stemming from a moment I sat him down and showed him how to play solitaire on the computer. Don't ever undervalue the power of good old solitaire games for getting someone comfortable with the computer. Insidious, yes, but it does work.

A dedicated teacher using technology off the fly to keep the learning process going

Hun School teacher holds class via tablet as she sits in Pa. Turnpike gridlock

After missing multiple school days because of snow this winter, Hun School history teacher Lynn McNulty wasn’t going to let a series of chain-reaction car crashes and a miles-long traffic jam on the Pennsylvania Turnpike yesterday keep her from school another day.

“I was probably about two miles back from the big, serious pileup, but there were accidents all around,” McNulty said yesterday. “And I was like, ‘Oh this is bad.’”

After sitting in the stand-still for about an hour at the Willow Grove exit on the turnpike and live-streaming a news program on her cell phone, McNulty realized her chances of getting to school in time to teach her advanced placement European history class were not good. So she posted a message to her class through the school’s internal communications system, telling them to contact her via video chat when they got in.

Bridging a distance of miles through technology, McNulty yesterday used the school’s electronic resources and her tablet computer to teach her class from her car that was stopped on the turnpike, which was shut down for hours because of an initial 25-vehicle pileup around 8:30 a.m. in the eastbound lanes between Willow Grove and Bensalem and Willow Grove, according to 6ABC.com.

“Literally no one was moving, and I sat through a total of four-and-a-half hours,” McNulty said.

Kudos to her! In related news, In pileup on eastbound Pa. Turnpike, at least 25 injuries reported, I'm glad no deaths were reported--hopefully the injuries were minor and people will soon recuperate. What a scary situation.

A night for tech issues

I had gone to my public library book and had gotten a few books, come home, taken a short (30 minute) nap, and then woke up to find that my friends' phone was acting up. One had called me a little after 5 pm, but I didn't get the voicemail until after 7, which is weird. By that time, I'd gotten an e-mail to answer my phone, and had tried calling them. The voicemail asked me to come over, so I headed over there. I did some basic troubleshooting, called the cable company, and they tried to fix it on their end. We decided the phone itself might have shorted out, as there was a storm this morning (it was actually what woke me up today), so I went home and got a phone that we could try out. No luck. I called the cable company back to arrange for a service call and they had me try plugging the phone directly into the modem, and that worked. Apparently some things were unplugged during the storm, and there was an extra cable for no good reason, and the wrong cable got plugged back in.

So that was resolved without a service call. Then I came home and found that my internet wasn't working. I reset my wireless router and everything was fine again. So I've gotten my share of troubleshooting tech issues tonight.

Funny tech predictions that are great for presentations

Use It Better: The Worst Tech Predictions of All Time

My favourite?

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."—Sir William Preece, chief engineer, British Post Office, 1876

How're the messenger boys working out for you, England?

A long way from the drive-in

Tiny Glass Lens Could Turn Mobile Devices Into Projectors

A tiny aspherical glass lens could turn your smartphone or tablet into a Star Wars-style projector.

It may not be holographic, but at least you and your friends could sit around a table or look up at a wall rather than huddling around someone’s palm-sized smartphone to watch the latest hilarity on YouTube.

At 1mm x 1mm x .8mm, it's about the size of a mechanical pencil lead point. That's pretty impressive.

Well, that might work

Robotic Clouds Will Provide Shade During Qatar World Cup

They're essentially blimps designed to shade the stadium in what can be 122°F (50°C) heat. And they're only $500,000 each which, as the article notes, is pocket change for a place like Qatar.

I remember reading about this in 'National Geographic'

But this New York Times slideshow is very, very good at showing what happens to First World's castoff computers when they reach Africa...

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/08/04/magazine/20100815-dump.html

PS to the New York Times: Putting an ad in the middle of of slideshow is just tacky and annoying.

(Thanks to @JoelJohnson for re-tweeting the link from @dylan20)

For more, here's that National Geographic piece on hi-tech trash:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text

Privatisation of education and the great capitalist experiment

A very interesting post about the need for core skills and how they got lost in the technology-laden curriculum of an experimental school.

In Philadelphia, Microsoft 'School of The Future' Is A Disaster For The Kids. Why The Rush To Privatize?

It's well worth a read. Again, thanks Buffy for sharing.

Could those holographic touchscreens be far away?

This one's just for YKWIA, who wants holographic touchscreens for use at the game. Now if they can project the screen into the air and combine with this technology, we might have something...

Possibility of TouchLESS Computers

Researchers at the Lab have developed a motion relationship between screen and computer, turning the monitor into a device that not only displays images but can sense light and movement as well.

“Imagine every pixel on your LCD screen emitting light could also be receiving light,” said Ramesh Rakar, an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab. “So in a sense, you’re creating a mega-pixel sensor.”

:)

Looking back at the cutting-edge technologies of yesteryear

In his post, We Live in the Future, David Rothman gives some telling illustrations of the difference between the technology of the 70s and 80s vs. today's. The pictures provide an excellent series of examples of how despite our failure to live up to all of the expectations of those decades (no moonbases, or flying cars, etc.), we have surpassed them in many ways.

So check out his post for some great comparisons, and a clever birth announcement on 96-column punchcards. (I think I understand where David got his self-avowed geekdom from, judging by his father's efforts.) :) I understand. My dad was always fiddling with radios, circuit designs, and programming. He even built our TV.

Something that could open up a world for the blind

Blinded Merseyside soldier 'sees' with tongue device

A Merseyside soldier blinded by a grenade in Iraq has said his life has been turned around by technology that allows him to "see" with his tongue.

L/Cpl Craig Lundberg, 24, from Walton, Merseyside, can read words, identify shapes and walk unaided using the BrainPort device.

The machine converts visual images into a series of electrical pulses which are sent to his tongue.

The soldier said the device gives off "a pins and needles sensation".

L/Cpl Lundberg lost his sight while serving with the King's Regiment after being hit by a rocket propelled grenade in 2007.

There's a video that accompanies the article that demonstrates the device. Although it's just a prototype, and an expensive one at that, there's hope that one day it will help those who are visually impaired navigate and read. The glasses have a camera and the device translates the letters or objects into a two-dimensional shape using electrodes on a 'lolly pop' held on the tongue. The lance corporal describes it like 'licking a nine volt battery or like popping candy'. The main drawback is since it is held on the tongue, you can't talk or eat at the same time you're using the device. Researchers are working on a smaller version that might fit in roof the mouth or such that would allow this at some point.

This is an excellent example of technology pursued in an effort to make people's lives better.

Helping the Greatest Generation (and some Boomers, too) connect

Helping Grandpa Get His Tech On

A few days before my 100-year-old mother’s death this summer, she said she had only one regret: not being able to see her family in California again.

But then I realized that I had my MacBook (with its built-in webcam) in my briefcase. A few phone calls later and my mother was using iChat to speak with and see her great-grandchildren for the first time in years.

There are challenges to older people in using technology, such as visual and auditory issues, but it's quickly becoming essential to the elderly, especially to keep in touch in an era where families are far-flung. I mean think about it...I started as a teenager with an Atari computer, and I'm 42. My parents, who are Baby Boomers, are in their 60s, and both my father and stepfather have programmed for a living. There are a lot of tech savvy people in those generations--maybe not having breathed it from day one like a Gen-Y, but still. But the ones older than that are getting into the technology pool in greater numbers than ever before, and there are websites out there who market aids to help them overcome both expense and declining senses. The article lists some of those. If you have an older person whom you'd like see more connected, check it out.

Things we took for granted, now going, going, gone...

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About

Amongst things like bells in telephones, DOS, and typewriters, there is:

96. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.

Interesting...

Thanks to Steven at Library Stuff for the link.

Considering the visually-impaired and technology

Stevie Wonder: Touch-screens alienate blind: Motown icon, advocates encourage CES vendors to consider blind needs

but potentially good news is:

Digital Scanner Turns Books Into Audio Files Instantaneously